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American writer without thinking of his university. It is otherwise in England.

Oxford and Cambridge have left, and still leave, their impress deeply upon English literature in two ways. Firstly, each university tends to give a definite classical form or style to every writer who passes through it. Secondly, the years spent at the university are such a charming and fruitful period of the life of every man who has been there, and give him in addition so vivid a sense of membership of an ancient, still living and famous society, that reminiscences and allusions flow out of him, and run through his writings as long as he lives.

The first of these two things, the existence of a harmonious, traditional style, is as evident in England as in France, although for different reasons. The uniformity, which does not sacrifice individuality, of French style is due to the long sustained classical tradition in France, kept alive not specially by the universities, but by the Church and the professional classes, and, to some extent, by the Académie française. In England the received style of correctness in writing, the accepted canons of taste, have been undoubtedly maintained by the two universities of Oxford and Cambridge, of which, down to nearly the middle of the 19th century, almost all writers or public speakers-politicians, statesmen, and clergymen were members. They had been to one or other of the ancient seats of learning which provided not merely an education but a way of life. They were steeped in the beauties of Oxford or Cambridge; they sat through the long, leisurely days in the college libraries; they talked and walked on the lawns and under the limes and elms of the college gardens; they were taught by tutors who were men of a wide culture as well as solid learning. It was impossible that a classical tradition, a formed and finished style of writing or speaking, should not be engendered within those ancient walls, and maintained when graduates and undergraduates passed out into the great world. The second thing, the prevalence of reminiscences of college days, of allusions to them, is one of the pleasant facts of English literature, particularly, of course, for readers who have been at, or are in any way familiar with, the universities. Poets and prose writers alike abound

in such allusions, which creep lovingly into the work of Charles Lamb, although he never himself experienced what he calls 'the sweet food of academic institution.' A few-only a few-English writers may be said to have been university men by accident. Dryden was at Trinity, Cambridge; but he probably would have been much the same man of letters if he had never passed through the university. So the influence may be traced with indefinable gradations and variations through Addison, Johnson, Wordsworth, Tennyson to Matthew Arnold, to whom, for good or ill, as a man of letters the university was all in all.

The intimate connexion between the two universities and literature did not exist before the 17th century. Chaucer was, clearly, acquainted with the universities and mentions them, but it is not known if he was a member of either. Certainly he dwells lovingly on the portrait of the Clerk of Oxford and describes him with a sympathy that seems to come from inside knowledge. Of the Elizabethans, Shakespeare was never at college; his genius embraced the whole national life; if any place can be said to have trained him it was the busy, many-sided world of London, vibrating with all the currents of thought and romance in the Elizabethan Age. Ben Jonson never went to the university. Marlowe was at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Greene was at St John's, Cambridge, and later confessed (perhaps untruthfully) to having led a wild life there. Sidney was at Christ Church, Oxford, where, it was said, his tutors 'could not pour in so fast as he could receive.' Spenser was at Pembroke College, Cambridge. In him the perennial charm of the universities begins clearly to shine forth, the attraction of the peaceful streams and meadows around Cambridge, the quiet country towns.

'Next these the plenteous Ouse came far from land,
By many a city and by many a towne,

And many rivers taking under-hand

Into his waters as he passeth downe,

The Cle, the Were, the Grant, the Sture, the Rowne.
Thence doth by Huntingdon and Cambridge flit,
My mother Cambridge, whom as with a Crowne
He doth adore and is adorned of it

With many a gentle muse and many a learned wit.'

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Spenser, although he belonged to the sister university, loved the streams around Oxford too-the Churn and Cherwell which feed the Thames; the Thames itself stooping under the burden

'Of that faire City, wherein make abode

So many learned impes, that shoote abroade,
And with their branches spred all Brittany,
No less than do her elder sister's broode.
Joy to you both, ye double nursery

Of Arts! but, Oxford, thine doth Thames most glorify.'

With the 17th century the connexion between the two universities and literature becomes close. To this result the existence of College Fellowships contributed, enabling men to live the life of cultured, leisured gentlemen amid surroundings congenial to literary production.

In the Middle Ages college life was not attractive. Endowments were small, colleges were poor, scholars and fellows lived in crowded quarters upon exiguous allowances. But in proportion as England grew in wealth throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, so did the colleges. Rents increased; it became fashionable to go to college; therefore, revenue from fees grew greater; the colleges became rich, built large and noble halls, stocked their libraries, planted their gardens, increased the allowances of the Fellows. An undergraduate who did sufficiently well in his studies was tempted to remain for life. He could gain a life Fellowship, with no other obligation except to enter Holy Orders and to be celibate. He would have beautiful rooms to live in; he would dine in a noble hall; he would find in the other Fellows agreeable and learned companions; he would have books, leisure, lovely and tranquil surroundings, suitable for quiet thought and writing. It is not, perhaps, amid such circumstances, that the highest literature is produced. The great epical writers, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, must pass through the furnace fires of the great world: the sheltered life of the college don is not for them. But for a certain type of literature, for the finished lyric, not too passionate, for the judicious, tranquil essay, the sagacious, balanced criticism, the college atmosphere is supremely suited. It has only one fault: it is too delightful, too easy. The time and resources which college life

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ssa affords may be consumed in cultured laziness; well-spent, -the it may help to make the almost perfect essay or poem. The George Herbert and Gray were products of college life. About one half of Herbert's literary work, English and Latin poems or essays, was written at Cambridge. The effect of the university on his life cannot be denied. He belonged to the wonderful family of 'Pembroke Herberts which has produced so many eminent men and women. He was educated at Westminster School, gained a scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, and received a Fellowship in the year 1616. He was, therefore, one of the first writers of distinction to receive an absolutely orthodox academic education-a public school, college scholarship, Fellowship. At Cambridge he became Public Orator, wrote fine addresses on State occasions, attended. Court, met the wits of the time, finally accepted the Rectory of Bemerton in Wiltshire, and died, in 1633, after three years spent as a model parish parson. In the slightly Puritan atmosphere of Cambridge during the reign of James I, he had learned to create literature without running into amatory verse, the chief vehicle of courtly belles-lettres. His volume of sacred poems, The Temple,' is naturally more associated with the Rectory of Bemerton than with Trinity. Yet to such a bookish' man as Herbert was, a collector as well as a reader, the library and gardens of Trinity, and its learned society meant much. That dilatoriness which seems ever a sad and necessary part of the poet's equipment had done its work.' At last he felt that to accomplish the greatest of which he was capable, he must leave Cambridge. He wrote:

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'Fain would I here have made abode,

But I was quickened by my houre.'

Yet it was Cambridge which prepared him for both his literary and pastoral work at Bemerton. George Herbert was one of the first literary Fellows.

When Milton went to Cambridge he was already on the way to be a poet and had written the grand paraphrase of Psalm cxxxvI. He passed eight years in the cool courts and gardens of Christ's College, reading ancient and modern literature, conversing with his friends and tutors, fencing for exercise, musing in the

lofty and graceful interior of King's College Chapel, beneath the wonderful stone-vaulted roof.

'But let my due feet never fail

To walk the studious cloisters pale
And love the high embowered roof,
With antick pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim, religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced Quire below,
In service high and anthem clear,
A way with sweetness through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,

And bring all heaven before mine eyes.'

('Il Penseroso,' 155-166).

Milton, however, much though he loved the University, eminent as were his scholarly gifts, was not to be a Fellow of his college. Perhaps he was not prepared to enter Holy Orders, perhaps his Puritanism-elegant, beautifully dressed young man though he was-stood in the way of his election. He retired to the quiet valleys and woods of Buckinghamshire, and continued there to find inspiration for his lyrical verse. Doubtless, his leaving Cambridge was for the best. As Fellow of a college he would never have written 'Paradise Lost." The stormy life of London during the Civil War, his own domestic afflictions, his association as a high public servant with Cromwell and the other stern and powerful Puritans, were required to call forth the deepest side of his genius.

In the Restoration period the universities influenced literature chiefly through the pulpit. The great divines, in that golden age of preaching, were all Oxford or Cambridge men trained in the orthodox, academic studies. Isaac Barrow was Master of Trinity. Jeremy Taylor was a Fellow of All Souls. They bear the mark of their university more than does Dryden. Indeed almost nothing is known of Dryden's university career although it lasted for nearly seven years (1650–6), and he was at the most magnificent and impressive of all foundations, Trinity College, Cambridge. Actually he preferred the sister university :